Puddles of Blood at My Feet
by The Bud
Summary: If you don't like Jean and Logan fics, with nothing to do with current contenuity, don't read.
1. Chapter 1

Hey! I don't own this! Please don't sue!

Puddles of Blood at My Feet.

"Uhhh…" Logan groans as he slowly wakens into a fog. He can barely concentrate while he looks around him. He feels the pain in the back of his skull, and the warm trickling of blood running along his down turned face, he also feels the aching in his arms as they are shackled above his head on ether side of his bruised body. He must have been hanging here for hours. But, where is here, and why isn't his healing factor working as well as it should? He sees someone to his left, he thinks it's Jean, she accompanied him up here, but the woman is so dirty and messed up, he can't be sure. She doesn't look as though she's breathing and Logan is worried until she finally takes a rasping breath. She sounds as if she's got a collapsed lung and you don't live long with that.

"Can you hear me?" He tentatively asks and he gets a very pain filled and almost silent "Yes"

"What happened?" He asks as he tries to free his hands. Her answer shocks him "Creed got free. He came for us" She quietly replied between heavy breaths.

"Where are we?" He wonders aloud" "In… the… basement" She wheezes as she sputters up another lungful of blood. Logan manages to get his hand free as the cuffs give way. Whoever put them here didn't want to keep them here forever, or they'd checked the cuffs. Instantly, his healing factor kicks into overdrive, healing his every wound. The cuffs must have been inhibiters. The love of his life isn't so lucky, at least one of her legs is broken, he finds upon inspecting her, as well as a rib or two, who knows what else.

"I'll get you out of here!" He promises. "Have you been able to telepathically call anyone?"

"Rogue and Gambit…. I tried.." She tries to speak as her whole body heaves as she draws in one, long breath, unable to finish her sentence. Then she collapses in a heap on the cold, dirt floor.

"Jeannie! Jeannie!" He cries out desperately, still unsure if they had a prayer of getting out of here. "Stay with me girl!" He knows why Creed did this, to take the one person that meant most in life away from him. Creed let him live just to see this, just to see what he could do to another person, just to make him suffer. He starts checking her signs and finds that they're weak, and getting weaker, but there. He notices a window about six feet off the ground across the room and looks out. He sees nothing but dense forest and recognizes where he is. He's in his vacation cabin near the laurels, The one he built by himself . They were tied up in his own basement. He had hoped that he and his new wife would raise kids here during the mild Canadian summers.

He and Jean had come to Canada to seek out Sabretooth, catch him and bring him to justice in America; he had killed a few dozen people in Soho and savagely brutalized Betsy and Warren, seemingly out of pure blood sport. Victor, Sabretooth, had not only brutalized Betsy, he had taken her in every way possible, right there in front of Warren, before Victor took Warren's eyes. Warren keeps describing the screaming in his therapy sessions, and Betsy won't talk at all.

Logan really has himself to blame, as it was him that gave Victor the injury that made him immune to all telepathy. He kicks himself every single day for popping that claw into Victor's brain, even though it was done at the time to keep Victor from doing such things, all it did was make him impervious to his prey. That's why Betsy was no match for Victor, and Jean lays broken at Logan's feet now. Jean was a warning for Logan. He's sure Victor didn't subject Jean to the same savagery he had for Betsy, not yet at least, simply because Logan was not conscience to watch.

He hears the familiar roar of the X-Jet a ways off, Rogue and Gambit should be here in a moment, and for once, Logan is glad to have somebody come to his home. He knows that aboard that Jet, they have transfusion supplies, and if he can get some of his blood into the crumpled woman at his feet, she'll probably heal, not all the way, but enough to get her some real treatment. He takes her limp body up the stairs, as he notes that his house looks untouched, except his pantry, which looks like Creed ate everything that was there, including the deer jerky. Probably the first meal he'd had in days. He lays Jean on his old couch and waits because that's all he can do, that and pray.

On his wall, he sees a wedding photo that the two took in Walhalla, way down south. They did it on a spur of the moment, after a night of chasing a new mutant energy signature. They'd come up here two weeks later, as part of their honeymoon and never even told anyone they'd married, no one had even suspected until Scott found the marriage certificate and caught the two looking in the newspaper for housing a month later. Scott had found it when looking for luggage to borrow.

Scott was pissed, no doubt about that, and even more so when the two found the perfect house about two miles from the school. The house was an old fix –it- up, but it had a yard perfect for children, a full basement and four bedrooms. The best part was, it was affordable, probably because someone had died horribly in that house and it had lain empty for years.

Jean's mother was over the moon that Jean had moved on from "that cheating bastard, Scott." Even though Logan had to convince Jean's father that he only had the best of intentions for his daughter. John Grey had heard it all before, and maybe, of all he had suffered for his daughter's sake, Scott was the hardest. So while Jean's mother was shoving oatmeal cookie after cookie into Logan's mouth, her dad just stared him down with the same piercing green eyes that had led Logan to fall in love with Jean. The whole thing was confusing.

The squeal of the landing gears on the Blackbird brings Logan to attention, and he focuses again of his wife's shallow breathing and seconds later, they're both on a plane headed to what she calls home, Salem, New York. As they work on her, Gambit hooks an I.V. line to Logan and the other end to Jean, and almost like a miracle, her wounds began to melt away and underneath the dirt, she starts to look like herself, even her breathing becomes less labored. Soon, her eyes flutter open, and she asks for a kiss, and after wiping her pretty face clean, he obliges.

Scott calls in on the communicom to see the two in passionate embrace and gives a look of disapproval. "I trust the rescue went well?" He asks.

"All went well, O cheerless leader." Gambit quips as he clamps the I.V. line. "She was in pretty bad shape, but Logan's blood donation took care of that well."

"Good thing that they're the same type." Scott says sharply before barking orders about the Blackbird's return.

"I'm going to snatch Scott bald when I get in." Rogue said as she starts the jet's engines. "He told us that we were crazy for thinking you two were out this far, or that you'd even called. And he threatened to make us pay for the jet fuel!"

"Much obliged Rogue." Logan replies as he tips his hat. "I need a change of clothes when I get home." And he did! His white t-shirt was covered in mud, blood, tissue bits, and what looked like some of Creeds fur. He was beginning to recall pieces of the fight, Victor pinning Logan to the ground outside the cabin, Jean's telekinetic field giving way as Creed struggled hard against it, and her punching Victor clear across the nose to get him off of Logan. After that, Logan must have gone berserk, there was no telling whether Logan did the damage to her, Creed, or a mixture of both, but then there was how he got chained in inhibiters and where the cuffs came from.

"What about me? Eh?" Gambit joked. "Don't I get a thank you?"

"No." Logan ribbed back, but a feeble "Thank you" wafted from the back of the plane.

"At least somebody respect Gambit." Gambit said as he pretended to be miffed.

"We should be landing in under forty-five minutes." Rogue cut in. "Beast will be waiting on the tarp with Dr. Reyes to look you both over. Jean, I'd recommend you didn't move too much with that leg being busted and all."

"I don't think I'll be doing that!" She joked between gasps of air. They could tell that she was using her telekinesis to shut known her pain receptors, even just to make the pain tolerable.

"Jeannie," Logan whispered, hoping that the Mississippi mud rat and the Cajun couldn't hear, "Did I do any of this to you?"

She just smiles weakly at him as she raises her left hand to his face. "You were just trying to protect me. Don't even think about this."

"How did we get to that basement? The last thing I remember was Creed smashing you into that tree." Logan looks at her as he holds her hand lovingly against his face. "And where did the cuffs come from?"

"The cuffs, I brought to keep Creed in line." She explained through coughs. "And we got into the basement because I flew us down there. I put you in the inhibiters to save you from Creed, but you got a few good licks in when you kicked my legs."

"And Creed?" He asks. "How did we get away from him?"

"You broke his neck." She sputtered into a napkin. "It took him awhile to regenerate it." She groaned as she moved her leg. "I just put a bubble around you that he couldn't get through."

"Oh, Jeannie!" He sighed softly to her. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be! At least he ate everything in the house and not me!" She attempts to lighten his mood. "I think you got me pretty good!" She kids as she tries to sit up and something makes a popping sound.

"Don't move, Jeannie." He cautions her. "Those punts to your legs could be worse than just a broken femur, I could have given you a massive hematoma."

"Uhhhh…" She whimpers through the pain "How'd you get so smart, short stuff?" She knows she's bad off, she knows she could die right there on that plane, but she also knows that there is no way her beloved Logan, James, would ever allow for it."

"I ain't known for being nice, Darlin'" He smiles back at her attempt at levity.

"You all buckle up back there!" A southern voice drawls from the front. " We'll be landing in ten, and t'ank you for flying Air Cajun!"

"And what am Ah?" Rogue jesters with him playfully. "Just the pilot?"

"Sorry, baby!" He counters back. "Air River Rat didn't have that same charm!"

"Ah am so gonna get you when we land!" The two just banter back and forth for the next few minutes like lovers do, while the two in the back just stare and laugh to themselves.

Back on the good, hard ground

"So, What happened here?" Beast asks as he starts his examination.

"Rogue punched me." Gambit says lightheartedly.

"Ahem, yes. I see!" Beast humors him. "I was actually talking to Jean. A lovers spat?"

"Something like that." She wheezes as she tries to move herself to the wheelchair waiting on the tarmac.

"I'd rather you let us move you. Jean." Hank worries over her. "From what I overheard on the communicom, just that you can talk to me is a cause for celebration. Let me have a look at that leg." He mumbles to himself about her injuries. "Logan, when we get a chance, we need to talk." Hank moves a light, but deliberate hand over Jean's body, feeling for broken bones, swollen blood vessels, and assessing the extent of her injuries.

Later, when everyone else has set in for a night of trivia shows, they have the chance to talk. Logan still only remembers bits and pieces of the encounter, but there are other things that Beast needs to know.

"I know that in your berserker states, you don't remember much, if anything at all, but Logan there are a few things I must find out." Beast says as he puts his glasses back on.

"Shoot, go for it." Logan tells him. He's just as curious to know.

"Do you remember what set you off?" Beast queries as he fills out the report on the extent of the injuries.

"Not really. I saw Jeannie crack Victor's nose, and then there was this smell like oranges coming off his clothes, I started to loose it then, but when he had her against the tree, and had a hand on her breast, I only remember pieces afterwards. Jean told me I had broken his neck after a few minutes." Logan tells him as more bits and pieces come through. "What does she remember?"

"She won't tell me, so ether I get Charles in here and tell me what the both of you know, or I hear it from you." Beast looks at him agitated. There are things that one or the both of them can tell him, but why be so tight lipped about it, unless one is protecting the other?

"Why are you looking at me like that? I know I did some of this Beast, but what aren't you telling me?" Logan asks frustrated. "She already told me that I broke her leg. What do you want? I really can't tell you anymore!"

"I've evidence that she wasn't just beat up, Logan." Beast replies angrily. "And whoever did it, wasn't gentle. What I want you to try and remember is could you have done this, or Victor."

"What are you saying, Hank? That I went mad and not only beat my new wife half to death, but raped her too? Why would you even think that?" Logan asks, taken aback.

"We know you did some of the damage already, Creed probably did some too, but Jean, for some reason, thinks she's protecting you. There is something that happened she won't tell me about." Beast calms down and relates to Logan. "She might even be frightened that something might be done to you if she talks. Logan, there were even fingernail marks dug into her neck. You can find out, or Charles can, she's going to be strung up in that bed for at least six weeks."

"Hank, can you do a DNA test on what you found on her? I… I have to know if I did this." Logan pleads. "You know how darn hard headed she is, she'd never let me know."

"I thought of it and I already have it going, Logan." Beast admits. "What are you going to do? You know what it means if you did do this, you know what it means if you didn't."

"Damned ether way." Logan replies. "Can I go in to see her?"

"May." Beast corrects, ever the stickler for proper grammar.

"I'm not waiting until May to see my wife!" Logan retorts.

"Never mind, Logan, just go in." Beast exhaustedly slides one hand down his blue, furry face.


	2. Trails of Tears Down My Chest

I'm listening to stoned puppets while I write this, by the way, I don't own this, someone else does, please don't sue.

Streams of Tears down my Chest

"It was me, wasn't it." Logan breaths in as he attempts to face his wife. "That's why I didn't smell him everywhere on you. Just tell me Jean, I have to know what happened." He pauses to think. "Show me."

She looks away as she knows what floats around in her mind would tear him apart. She knows that she's not strong enough to face what happened to her, she knows that he's not strong enough to know that for the most part, he did it.

"Jeannie, I have to know. Beast wants to know! He's going to get Charles in here to show us if you won't!" He changes his tone. "You don't have to protect me." He tells her softly.

She looks back at him, the pain and hesitation evident in her captivating green eyes, she opens her mouth to talk as a knock comes at the door, It's Scott. He acts as though he still has claim on Jean, as though it's his job to shield her, like she still even wants him after what he did to her.

"I just wanted to see how she's doing." He says as he peeks his head in, his new wife, Emma, closely follows him. She's obviously primped for her visit.

"Charles wanted me to come." She tells me proudly, with a mischievous glint in her blue eyes. "He felt that I might be able to persuade Jean to tell us what happened." I'm not dumb, Emma sees this as her opportunity to repay Jean for messing around in her mind when Jean found out about Scott's infidelity. Revenge for the memories that Jean brought so close to the surface, and maybe for some extra fun at Jean's expense.

"I hate to tell you this, Emma, but Jean's already agreed to show me what happened.' Logan tells Emma in a "sorry for you!" tone. "Besides, a telepath of your skill would have a hard time getting through Jeannie's defenses. Might hurt you more than help her."

Emma opens her pink little mouth to protest but Scott cuts in too quickly for her to retort. "Hank gave us this vial. It's from our Prototype files, you know, for if one of us needs to be taken down." He pauses.

"I know what those files are, Scott. I seem to recall them being researched on us before." I growl. I don't like where this is going.

"Ahem, yes." He starts again. "This will nullify Jean's abilities to the point that Emma may access Jean's memories. It'll be difficult for Emma, but I think she might be able to do safely. Even with Jean's powers nullified, she's still got some amazing barriers." Scott's blushing and I know mental barriers aren't the ones on his mind.

Emma must have picked up on his stray little thought. "May I speak to you outside, Scott." She says, just keeping her anger below her surface, but I can smell the white-hot heat boiling deliciously in her body. Jean looks at me, wide eyed and almost frightened. Suddenly, I know why, I extended my claws without and shredded my chair before I even knew what I was doing.

Just looking at the expression on her face, just knowing that I could have hurt her again, and not even understood what I was doing, my whole body feels as though it's going to melt. "Oh, Jeannie! How many times has this happened?" I want to cry, but I don't know how. I crouch down beside her and take her hand against my face. "Please just show me!" I'm answered with a warm glow spreading through the folds of my mind.

I can see us in our bedroom, and I know we've just had a fight. I know because she's sitting on the bed, seething mad at me, and I don't remember why. She pushes past the fog of my feral brain to show me smashing everything in the room. I don't ever remember that lamp being dashed against the wall, and I don't remember pushing her against the bed and ripping her clothes off. This must have been the first time I did this. I can see her trying to get away from me, punching me, begging for me to stop. Sobbing in pain as I turn her over and get what I want, as her fingernails ripping the satin sheets on the bed to shreds, refusing to believe this is happening to her. The next thing I remember is standing above her apologizing profusely. Everything in the room was fixed, I don't know whether she telekinetically repaired it or just clouded my mind.

"Oh, Jeannie!" I nuzzle my face against her hand. "Why didn't you use your phoenix force to stop me?"

"I did." She cries slightly, almost as though she's ashamed to show me the next part.

I'm burning alive as my temper flairs and I can see myself running through the woods near her parents' house. I see myself slipping though the trees chasing my quarry. My flesh is dripping off me as though I'm made of wax. The near full moon had lit the fallen tissue in a trail on the forest ground. I finally succumb to the pain, sinking to my knees on the ground, returning to my mind. Jean comes back to me, and holds my quivering body as I rebuild myself. She gets me back to the house without anyone ever becoming the wiser. I always thought this was some sort of horrible nightmare.

"What are you thinking about?" She asks me, her voice shaking.

"Did I ever hurt you before this?" I ask. I don't want to be told the truth, I think I just want to be lied to, I just don't want to think that I could have done these things. She's silent again, not wanting to show me more than she has. "Jean?"

The memory comes floating over me, like I've come up from a deep ocean dive, finding nothing but burning oil floating around me on the surface. Jean doesn't say anything, but I can see an animal, an almost human looking animal, hidden in partial shadow, clutching something, it looks like a limp woman, parts of her red hair catching glints off the fire burning on the ground ten feet away. This must have been the camping trip we took up here after we got married. I couldn't understand why she was so afraid to go camping. I told her I'd keep the big, bad wild animals away. I'd no idea that I was the big, bad beast that she was most afraid of. I see what almost looks like a passionate embrace, when I hear the sickest sound I've ever heard. I hear a resounding SNAP and a body sink to the ground with a thud. Then, there is a sound like flesh ripping, teeth gnawing at bones and, the squish of raw flesh filling the air almost, nauseatingly. The air suddenly crackles to life and her body rises in the air, her head rolling back in place, all that hair spreading around her as a halo, her body healing itself and her slinking back down, unconscious, but alive. The animal at her head crouching, sniffing and finally falling asleep next to the warm, nude body.

"Does anybody else know about this?" I look at her horrified. "Why did you stay with me after that?"

"Charles knows." She looks at him, trying to comfort him. "He said he'd help you, we'll all help you. I just didn't want you to leave again." She looks at me in compassion. "I didn't leave because I love you and knew you could get over this. Besides, it's not like you were keeping secrets from me, you couldn't help it."

"Why couldn't you heal this time?" I press, puzzled.

"That time camping was spontaneous, I just don't know. I tried." She smiles at me, but I can still see the fear. A part of me understands why she hid this from me, and part of me is glad. The most of me just wonders why none of them let me know so that I could stop this before it came to this.

"What about this time?" I ask wincing. What she shows me makes me want to cut my own head off.

Her recollections pick up where my foggy brain lets off. I see her punching Creed after her powers drain off, that orange smell wafting through my nostrils, I'm pushing through the pain of my own broken leg and crushed forearm rapidly healing. There's Victor pinning Jean to the tree, his right hand around her neck, the left one straying to her breasts, down towards her skirt. I start seeing red as I try to stand up, I could sense Jean's anger wafting off her, I could see her starting to black out from Creed's choke hold. Her fight to get away, the pure desperation of her plight as I watch helpless to stop it, Creed tearing her little pink panties away from her body. She manages to kick him in the one place very few men would ever enjoy, and he drops her. Jean runs back to check on me, and in my red haze, I start to attack her. She knows the look I give her, as she turns tail, and still not able to fly, runs. She's quick, she runs almost like a deer from a predator.

I take pace after her, playing feral games, letting her get about fifty feet ahead of me. As I start chasing her, Creed grabs hold my ankle, pulling me down to the ground with him. "Yer not getting' away this time, Runt!" He snarls in my face. His spit is spraying me, dripping off my hat.

Jean sees me in trouble with Creed, and against her better judgment, returns to try and help me. Her scent wafts towards me again, Creed smells her too as he stomps my face into the dirt. By this time, she's regained some of her strength, and her abilities, as Creep makes a mad bull rush towards her, she blows him away. Bits and pieces of him splattering against my clothes, and as he lands at my feet, I break his neck. I walk over to Jean, her body physically spent body, hunched over on the ground. I can see her looking up at me with those green eyes, crying. Afraid that I'm going to kill her and not remember a thing in the morning, Afraid that I'm going to leave her out here for wild animals to devour and scatter.

"What did I do next, Jeannie?" I ask in a lowered tone of voice, praying no one else could hear, praying Beast is wrong, Praying that she found strength to get us into the basement of my vacation house and that nothing else happened.

I watch as my boots make crunching sounds in the grass, then as those boots make a crunching sound against her arm and ribs, knocking her over. I try to turn my head, trying not to watch what happened next, but it's hard when the vision surrounds you. I watch as the force in which I soundly throw her against the house breaks a rib into her lung, as my fingernails puncture the delicate skin of her neck. The things I did to her body while Creed stitched himself back together are going to haunt me forever. I didn't do this to protect her! I did this because some scent drove me berserk!

I watched as her eyes became black and the heat off her body singed holes through my soft tissue, turning a good part of the wall I have her up against into hot glass. Somehow, whatever possessed her got us into the basement and I see Jeannie shackling me up before I kick her legs out. I watch as she falls to the floor and a burned up Creed bursts in. She keeps him from me, but not after he throws her around like a rag doll on that packed dirt floor.

Through with his play thing, he goes to eat whatever he can out of the house. I rage against my shackles so hard that I crack my head on the wall behind me and pass out. When I wake up, there are puddles of blood at my feet. There is where my memories return.

"Jeannie, I can't do this to you anymore! Not again! I need help." I tell her as I stand to leave, disgusted with myself. "I'll come back when I'm better."

"Logan! Please don't do this!" She exclaims as she cries for me.

"I thought I was over these nightmares, Jean. And I'm not." I tell her. "I thought I was over you having been married before, and I'm not." I get my hat. "I love you." As I reach for the door, Scott comes back in with an obvious red mark on his face.

"What happened in here?" Scott demands as he looks at the furniture.

"Me." I gotta get out of here." I snarl as I nearly knock over Emma.

"Don't you want to stay for the show?" She asks me smoothly. She looks at me with hooded eyes. I know she's up to something, something I can't stop.

"It's a rerun. I've already seen it." I bare my teeth at her, and I can smell her getting wet. The look she gives me, dripping with sin.

"Logan!" Jean pleads. "Please don't go!"

I walk out anyways. Her cries following me down the hall as I past Beast. With my advanced hearing, I hear Scott fill the syringe and plunge it into Jean's arm, and her screams as Emma invades the fabric of Jean's mind. I try to keep walking down the hall, with my boots clicking down the way. I try to, but I can't. I find myself running back to Jean's bedside, watching the blood ooze from her nose and her body thrash from the pain that Emma inflicts on her.

"Emma! Stop this! What do you think your doing?" Scott shouts as he tries to intervene. "Somebody get Charles!"

Beast, hearing Jean's screams comes running with a sedative, and instead of pushing it into Jean, pushes it into Emma instead. Emma lets out a muffled "Oh!" before finding herself catching on psychic flame, even the whites of her eyes are shades of orange as he passes out in her seat.

Jean's whole quaking body calms as the last fiery remnants of the fit swirl into colorful smoke above her and dissipate.

"What was that about?" I bark and pick Scott up by the lapels of his shirt and slam him against the nearest wall.

"What do you care? You walked out on her!" Scott spats back, his eyes glowing red.

"So did you, Asshole! You just remember that!" I hiss back as I set him down. "Beast, are they O.K?"

"You should have asked that to start with, instead of your Alpha male posturing!" Beast snaps as he checks the pulse on Emma. "Scott, can you Check Jean's vitals? Logan, I need you to stay right there."

"She's beating, but she's not responding to any light, Hank." Scott looks around. "Emma the same way?"

"Yes. Almost as though the two are locked in psychic battle on the astral plane." Beast calmly states. "I'm calling in Charles."

"What does that mean?" Logan demands as he tries to make his way to his wife's side.


End file.
